Economic Development Journal - Summer 2014

"We Will Not Let This Place Dry Up and Blow Away": An Economic Development Storyby C. Mark Smith, FM, HLM This is the story of Sam Volpentest - son of immigrants, grocery salesman, tavern owner, community cheerleader, economic developer, lobbyist, political insider, and community icon - who fought to save his community from "drying up and blowing away." He received IEDC's Chairman's Award for Lifetime Achievement in Economic Development at the age of 100.

The Uptown Consortium, Inc. in Cincinnati: Leveraging Anchor Institutions to Strengthen Neighborhoodsby Beth Robinson, CEcD The Uptown Consortium is a non-profit community development corporation dedicated to building strong public-private neighborhood partnerships to restore and revitalize the five urban neighborhoods that comprise Uptown Cincinnati. The creation of the organization by the CEOs of the five largest institutions in the city was a bold and innovative move. The Consortium received the IEDC Gold Award for Neighborhood Development in 2013.

Vegas 2.0: Rebooting Nevada's Economic Engineby Jonas Peterson, CEcD In Southern Nevada, the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance (LVGEA) has quickly emerged as one of the most productive economic development organizations in the western U.S. Armed with a mandate to restructure a regional economy that was hard hit by the great recession, LVGEA partnered with a robust network of private and public sector leaders to transform the regional economy.

Power & Water: Milwaukee's Elemental Economic Strategyby Greg Flisram, CEcD The city of Milwaukee is attempting to redeploy its legacy assets in water and power-based engineering and manufacturing by pairing them with new platforms for applied research. The hope is to help the local economy regain some of its innovation footing and create a more nurturing environment for new water and power company start-ups.

Connecting Danville, Virginia, to the Future: Deployment of a Municipal Broadband Networkby Joe King Danville, Virginia, is one of a growing number of American cities that operates its own advanced fiber-optic broadband telecommunications network. Launched over a decade ago primarily to stimulate economic growth and development, "nDanville" (network Danville) has positioned Danville as a digitally connected community capable of supporting any high-tech or telecommunications business needing gigabit-plus broadband service.